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Sleepaway School: Stories from a Boy's Lifereviewed by Jeffrey L. Lewis - 2006 Title: Sleepaway School: Stories from a Boy's Life Author(s): Lee Stringer Publisher: Seven Stories Press, New York ISBN: 1583224785, Pages: 227, Year: 2004 Search for book at Amazon.com In many ways, Lee Stringers memoir Sleepaway School is about what it means to be an African American child living in the contradictory space that often exists between African Americans and whites. With evocative detail, Stringer crafts a nuanced story about the ambiguity of living between survival and resistancea struggle as common to todays poor urban African American as it was for Black children in the days of his childhood in the 1950s and 1960s. Through Stringers eyes, we discover what it means to live on the edge of white imagination and ignorance, and to be at the mercy of it. However, Stringers story is also about the creative potential of this space, and how we can occasionally transform it from a space of hostility and ignorance, to one of friendship and understanding.
Sleepaway School primarily takes place at Hawthorne Cedar Knolls, a school for troubled children in a largely white... (preview truncated at 150 words.)To view the full-text for this article you must be signed-in with the appropriate membership. Please review your options below:
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- Jeffrey L. Lewis
University of Wisconsin-Madison E-mail Author JEFFREY L. LEWIS is an assistant professor of Human Development and Family Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He studies the cultural contexts of childhood and the impact of culture on children’s developmental pathways. His current research examines the social ecology of learning for African American boys, and the development of their academic and social identities. His most recent publication is “Black talk about AIDS,” soon to be published in the Journal of African American Studies. He is currently conducting an analysis of classroom data to identify characteristics of classroom climate, and instructional and disciplinary interactions that support constructive social and academic behaviors in African American boys.
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